That's a very interesting study, Cactuar! I'll have to look into it more after work today.

Felgraf wrote:

I'm... confused as to what this strip is trying to convey.
Super-rationalism and denial of all emotions is bad? O-kay. Um. ... Does anyone REALLY think that 'no emotion' is a good thing? Is it ever really portrayed in a *positive* light?

Well, I guess if you're called shrill, hysterical, or out of control one too many times, one might feel some desire for emotional limitation, if not the outright absence of them. There's also the whole thing about how males aren't "supposed" to have emotions, that's a female thing. God save a dude who happens to cry, lest fifty people come in and call him a "pussy".

But in the context of emotions vs. rationality, I see it a lot in debates where someone'll say another's argument is invalid because they are experiencing emotions, no matter how thought-out their argument is, no matter how slight of an emotion they may be displaying, no matter how carefully they choose their words. If you admit that you are frustrated, sad, or upset, you lose.

I don't know if being emotionless is often portrayed in a positive light for humans--it's a little easier with alien characters because aliens--but I've definitely seen people wish they didn't have emotions for one reason or another. And I'm sure there's at least a hundred songs out there wishing they didn't have a heart (emotions) so they could move on with life.

It might be less idealisation and more not wanting to deal with shit anymore, but there are very likely people out there who find that ideal. I just don't know any like that personally.

Hrm, I suppose I hadn't thought about it from the 'men aren't supposed to show sadness' angle, but I thought it was (socially) acceptable form men to show SOME emotions?

Anger, especially. Why, look at... every sporting event ever. Glee. CRYING'S not 'allowed' (though I don't care. I will cry at the first 10 minutes of Up, and at the beautifully bittersweet end to Toystory 3, and during Wreck It Ralph if i want to, damnit!).

And that's true, that some people consider showing emotion to mean you've 'lost' the debate (these people are assholes), though... I guess I just didn't think they were very widespread?

I'd almost say this is an attack on what people *perceive* scientists to be, but I figure Tats is a bit more knowledgeable from that (as I'd argue emotionless robots who suck the joy and wonder out of things is about as far from a good scientist as you can get. Being a good scientist requires maintaining a VERY strong Inner Five Year Old.)

And true, people do sometimes wish they didn't have emotions in song and such-but that often seems to be because the person is feeling pain or sadness or alternatively feeling desire towards something/someone they KNOW they shouldn't, and so they wish they didn't feel that way, and... .. I dunno, that just doesn't seem to be the context of this comic? Then again, perhaps it is, given how Slick locked his heart away after it was broken._________________"No, but evil is still being --Is having reason-- Being reasonable! Mousie understands? Is always being reason. Is punishing world for not being... Like in head. Is always reason. World should be different, is reason."
-Ed, from Digger

The strip can also be referring to the derailing tactic of appealing to rationality. The person doing the derailing insists on the topic at hand being approached without any emotional involvement, treating the marginalized person whom the subject actually affects as irrational - and therefore as someone whose arguments can't be taken seriously.

For the 'rational' person, it is all an intellectual exercise, a diversion, some fun hypothetical discourse. And they just don't get why the other party is angry or using personal experience as examples. Because personal experience is totally irrelevant, y'see._________________[Stripeypants has enabled lurk mode.]

The strip can also be referring to the derailing tactic of appealing to rationality. The person doing the derailing insists on the topic at hand being approached without any emotional involvement, treating the marginalized person whom the subject actually affects as irrational - and therefore as someone whose arguments can't be taken seriously.

For the 'rational' person, it is all an intellectual exercise, a diversion, some fun hypothetical discourse. And they just don't get why the other party is angry or using personal experience as examples. Because personal experience is totally irrelevant, y'see.

With the risk of being flamed, I will try to explain a part of the behaviour of the person you described.

Your emotions might be what they are, they can be totally justified based on the topic you are discussing and how you feel about it, but they are not arguments.

"I feel this way about x" is no argument about the objective nature of 'x'.

I doubt a truly rational person will be confused as to why one could get emotional in a discussion, since it's ridiculously obvious that the topic might be stressful/important/personal/etc to others. But they won't allow the emotion to 'count' as an argument, for the reasons explained above.

On using personal experiences as arguements, well it depends on what sort of point you're trying to make.

If you want to say 'x can happen' and you want to validate your view based on your personal experience 'x happened to me', then it makes perfect sense, of course since it happened to you, 'x' is something that can happen.
If you want to say, however, that 'x usually/always happens' and you try to validate this opinion with 'x has happened to me' then no, this isn't sufficient argument/evidence, because our personal lives/experiences are not necessarily the statistical average, or even more the absolute, case.

Side note: I think the strip actually refers to a large part of today's society that deems a man experiencing, or god forbid showing, emotions as weak. Which is of course, utter rubbish and demeaning to women, as it has the conclusion that women, who are 'allowed' and 'encouraged' to be emotional are also 'allowed/encouraged' to be weak.

The strip can also be referring to the derailing tactic of appealing to rationality. The person doing the derailing insists on the topic at hand being approached without any emotional involvement, treating the marginalized person whom the subject actually affects as irrational - and therefore as someone whose arguments can't be taken seriously.

For the 'rational' person, it is all an intellectual exercise, a diversion, some fun hypothetical discourse. And they just don't get why the other party is angry or using personal experience as examples. Because personal experience is totally irrelevant, y'see.

Good point. I remember a discussion on reddit about rape (these never go well really) and a rape survivor decided to tell her terrible tale. Someone proceeded to dismiss her because she was being too emotional about it. Somewhere, someone thought they had more oversight on what rape was because he had facts, despite talking through someone with the actual experience. And for some reason thought she couldn't bring light on the subject because she was emotional about something that's pretty gosh dang emotion-inducing.

The good news is that everyone thought he was a douchebag._________________No one is every truly alone with pizza.

I think is a mix of both. Is a cheap shot dismiss an argument because the oponent is getting emotionally while arguing. And some topics are too serious to play a rationale "devil advocate", f.e. people defending some aspects of rape or other controversial themes.

Still, I think rationalism is the right way to expose ideas. A person may be fueled by emotion in his/her speech but needs to be rational explaining it or risks to be missunderstand.

On the other side, men being unable to show emotions is a way of crippling us by society. If I want fucking cry like a child with wall-e I am not going to resign with the manly-lonely-tearę

I'm happy to see a feminist issue tackled on the other side of the sexes.

(I said the f word, run for cover)

I am, too. I actually registered just to point it out if no one else did.

Women clearly have it hard, but there are some ways that men have trouble, too, and it's good to see Tat talking about those issues a little more. Little boys are beautiful, sweet little things full of potential and ability to care and love and cry, but society beats all of that out of them by the time they reach adulthood.

And then women wonder why there aren't any sensistive guys. (Not that it's specifically women's fault. Again, it's society's fault, and that includes people of all races/sexes/backgrounds/etc.)

Felgraf wrote:

I'm just... this comic seems to be ridiculing a supposedly-by-society desired stereotype, but... I've *RARELY* seen that stereotype depicted in a positive light anyways.

I'm just very confused.

It's interesting that you say that, because it's really very subtle and can be difficult to catch in media. The only "proper" male emotions seem to be anger and... stoicity. It's more obvious in the real world than on TV, with boys being told to toughen up because "boys don't cry," while little girls are coddled when they're upset (which can be bad for us womenfolk, as well). We should be shooting for a moderate point between the two; maybe something like, "There, there, it's okay, now come with me and we'll take care of this."

It's the other side of the "women can't be angry" coin. Women have to be quietly content and smile a lot, and men have to be loud and brazen and punch things. It's not fair to anyone involved, because everyone is missing out on experiencing the full spectrum of emotions.

The strip even pushes this idea, with the supposedly emotionless man showing the only acceptable male emotion (anger) to get rid of the unacceptable male emotion (which appears to be love).

So, anyway, as I was saying... As much as I love having Tat as an ally who's showing all the various ways that women are wronged, it's good to see him making a more blatant statement about men's issues.

...I'm sorry that my first post has been so rambly, and probably full of information that most of you know already. ._.

Your emotions might be what they are, they can be totally justified based on the topic you are discussing and how you feel about it, but they are not arguments.

"I feel this way about x" is no argument about the objective nature of 'x'.

Just an addendum here - sometimes stating that you feel in a particular way is more true than attempting some form of objectivity. By cautiously saying that you are feeling this, you can distance youself from false objectivity and save yourself from looking like an asshat. In a lot of arguments, especially when it comes to the regular heated topics such as politics, ethics or religion there is rarely any real objectivity to be had. One of the major moral and rethoric failures I see constantly is when people attempt to apply or claim to apply scientific objectivity in areas where it is utterly useless._________________\m/

Geareye, I'm not new to logic, and I am aware of why people do it. However, the people who do it may not be aware of how they come across, or that some people deploy an appeal to rationality cheaply - along the same vein of telling women they are hysterical, over emotional, or 'cute when you're angry' if they are all fired up about something. Incidentally, racial/ethnic, religious, sexual/gender minorities are often characterized as having no control over their emotions.

Then there is "You are too close to the situation and are not able to look at it clearly." Not being objective.

A problem with all this is that the experiences of marginalized people are often under-documented. So when a marginalized person talks about their experience, they will be dismissed out of hand because no one 'important' has written about it - and omg all the members of this group do is complain!

An example of this is the argument that family histories passed down to descendants of slaves are worthless, because they weren't written down._________________[Stripeypants has enabled lurk mode.]

Your emotions might be what they are, they can be totally justified based on the topic you are discussing and how you feel about it, but they are not arguments.

"I feel this way about x" is no argument about the objective nature of 'x'.

Just an addendum here - sometimes stating that you feel in a particular way is more true than attempting some form of objectivity. By cautiously saying that you are feeling this, you can distance youself from false objectivity and save yourself from looking like an asshat. In a lot of arguments, especially when it comes to the regular heated topics such as politics, ethics or religion there is rarely any real objectivity to be had. One of the major moral and rethoric failures I see constantly is when people attempt to apply or claim to apply scientific objectivity in areas where it is utterly useless.

Objectivity is nigh impossible to achieve, really. And assuming one has achieved objectivity can lead to imagining there is no bias whatsoever._________________[Stripeypants has enabled lurk mode.]

I think is a mix of both. Is a cheap shot dismiss an argument because the oponent is getting emotionally while arguing. And some topics are too serious to play a rationale "devil advocate", f.e. people defending some aspects of rape or other controversial themes.

Still, I think rationalism is the right way to expose ideas. A person may be fueled by emotion in his/her speech but needs to be rational explaining it or risks to be missunderstand.

On the other side, men being unable to show emotions is a way of crippling us by society. If I want fucking cry like a child with wall-e I am not going to resign with the manly-lonely-tearę

And chicks digs emotive men

I like everything you say here, and I especially like the term 'manly-lonely-tear(c)'._________________[Stripeypants has enabled lurk mode.]

I'm happy to see a feminist issue tackled on the other side of the sexes.

(I said the f word, run for cover)

I am, too. I actually registered just to point it out if no one else did.

Women clearly have it hard, but there are some ways that men have trouble, too, and it's good to see Tat talking about those issues a little more. Little boys are beautiful, sweet little things full of potential and ability to care and love and cry, but society beats all of that out of them by the time they reach adulthood.

And then women wonder why there aren't any sensistive guys. (Not that it's specifically women's fault. Again, it's society's fault, and that includes people of all races/sexes/backgrounds/etc.)

Felgraf wrote:

I'm just... this comic seems to be ridiculing a supposedly-by-society desired stereotype, but... I've *RARELY* seen that stereotype depicted in a positive light anyways.

I'm just very confused.

It's interesting that you say that, because it's really very subtle and can be difficult to catch in media. The only "proper" male emotions seem to be anger and... stoicity. It's more obvious in the real world than on TV, with boys being told to toughen up because "boys don't cry," while little girls are coddled when they're upset (which can be bad for us womenfolk, as well). We should be shooting for a moderate point between the two; maybe something like, "There, there, it's okay, now come with me and we'll take care of this."

It's the other side of the "women can't be angry" coin. Women have to be quietly content and smile a lot, and men have to be loud and brazen and punch things. It's not fair to anyone involved, because everyone is missing out on experiencing the full spectrum of emotions.

The strip even pushes this idea, with the supposedly emotionless man showing the only acceptable male emotion (anger) to get rid of the unacceptable male emotion (which appears to be love).

So, anyway, as I was saying... As much as I love having Tat as an ally who's showing all the various ways that women are wronged, it's good to see him making a more blatant statement about men's issues.

...I'm sorry that my first post has been so rambly, and probably full of information that most of you know already. ._.

That's true, I guess I was just confused because the comic wasn't going "Oh no! SADNESS!" , it was oh no, ANY EMOTION! Perhaps the generalization to all emotions that threw me for a loop.

I guess it also helps I've never really been ridiculed for crying at sad/emotional things. (... Or, say, during the train scene in Spiderman 2. I am a goddamn marshmallow at times, it seems!). I got reaallllyyy lucky with regard to the parental lottery, I think._________________"No, but evil is still being --Is having reason-- Being reasonable! Mousie understands? Is always being reason. Is punishing world for not being... Like in head. Is always reason. World should be different, is reason."
-Ed, from Digger

Objectivity is nigh impossible to achieve, really. And assuming one has achieved objectivity can lead to imagining there is no bias whatsoever.

Indeed. Also, even science shuns away from using terms such as truth or objectivity for precisely that reason, prefering to wait decades or even longer before anything even gets labelled as a theory. A lot of people arguing who think themselves rational need to eat more humblepie._________________\m/